Trust accounting pilot green-lighted.

A six-month pilot of a trust accounting program aimed at automatically bringing participating lawyers into compliance with Bar trust accounting rules has been approved by the Board of Governors and is set to begin in August.

"This is a potential home run," Bar President Bill Schifino said.

Board parliamentarian Andy Sasso said the Bar is looking for around 12 law firms, each with funds of multiple clients in the firm's trust accounts, to participate.

Although preliminary plans anticipated a nominal charge for participating lawyers, the program is now expected to be free for Bar members and have an added bonus of substantially boosting IOTA income for The Florida Bar Foundation.

Sasso and Steven Frazier, of FIS, the Jacksonville-based financial services company working with the Bar on the trust accounting program, presented the details at the board's March 24 meeting in St. Augustine. Sasso noted the proposal was unanimously recommended by the Special Committee on Trust Accounting Solutions, which he chairs, and by the board's Program Evaluation Committee.

"We can help the members of The Florida Bar, the people served by the members of The Florida Bar, and the people served by The Florida Bar Foundation," Sasso said. "It will provide for all the trust accounting work to be done automatically for the lawyers. Lawyers would not have to do reconciliation for any trust accounting work. As long as they put the correct information in, then all the accounting work will be done automatically."

Currently, "There are over 33,000 trust accounts in Florida in over 200 banks, and there's over $5 billion in trust accounts," he said. Interest on those accounts, is about 0.1 percent.

The proposal would create one large "omnibus" trust account that pools the trust accounts of participating lawyers, Sasso said.

"The way the process will work is lawyers will go into The Florida Bar website and sign into their Bar account in order to access the trust accounting solution software icon to set up their account. Every time they have a new client or a new matter, they set up a new subaccount with a new account number," he said. "When they make a deposit, they key in the information to go into that client's account. Every time they make a withdrawal, they key into that client's account."

Deposits can be made online or at local branches of SunTrust Bank. Withdrawals can be made by checks printed and mailed by FIS, checks printed at the lawyer's office using magnetic...